The Future Arrives in an Underwhelming Form: Science Fiction's Predictions and the Reality of Everyday Life
A Vision of the Information Age before the Internet
When I was a teenager, before the internet had spread into ordinary homes, I remember watching a documentary-style drama about a future information society.
I no longer remember the title or the details of the story. As I recall it, information across society was connected through a network, and someone misused the protagonist’s personal data to frame him as a criminal.
At the time, there was no internet or smartphone in everyday life. The futuristic information terminal in the drama looked, if my memory is accurate, like a smaller and more powerful version of the personal computers available then. That was probably how people imagined the computer of the future.
It would look painfully dated today.
And yet the future predicted by the drama was remarkably accurate.
The Prediction Was Right, but the Appearance Was Wrong
Society became connected through networks, and personal information came to be managed by computers. People around the world now carry devices that can send text, photographs, and video instantly. People even have their identities stolen and become involved in crimes as a result.
The internet and smartphones have gone far beyond the world imagined by that old drama.
But it got one major thing wrong.
The future’s appearance.
In science fiction, when the future arrives, even the rooms somehow become futuristic. The furniture, clothes, and vehicles all look advanced, and the whole of everyday life follows a single visual design.
Look around my room today, however, and very little has changed.
There is still a desk, a chair, and a bed. The television has become thinner, and some paper books have been replaced by a smartphone or tablet, but the basic space in which people live remains much the same.
A smartphone exceeds the machines imagined by old science fiction, yet its owner sits on a chair that has barely changed at all.
The future arrived without looking futuristic.
Reality Changes Only What It Needs to Change
A film or television drama set in the future must make that future immediately visible.
If a story takes place in 2050 but the characters live in an ordinary apartment and use an ordinary table, it will look like a contemporary drama. So the production adds transparent displays and strange furniture, then redesigns the entire city to look futuristic.
Reality is not that consistent.
The internet changed the world, but it did not need to change the shape of a chair. The smartphone arrived, but the rice bowl stayed the same. Generative AI arrived, and I still type on a keyboard.
Technology advances dramatically while most of daily life continues using familiar objects.
That is why the real future lacks the visual unity of a science fiction film.
Extremely advanced technology and centuries-old household objects coexist in a jumble.
It looks a little cheap, but that is probably what the future is really like.
Humanoid Robots Will Probably Work in Unremarkable Places
Recently, I have often encountered discussions of physical AI and humanoid robots.
AI will leave the computer screen, work in factories, carry packages, and use the same tools as people. Hearing this, we quickly imagine a science-fiction future in which every home has a robot that cooks, cleans, and provides care.
Even if humanoid robots succeed technically, however, they will probably spread first in much less glamorous places.
They may restock supermarket shelves after closing time, carry boxes in warehouses, handle components in factories, or perform dangerous work at waste-processing facilities. Even when we occasionally see one in town, our reaction may be no more dramatic than, “Oh, there is a robot.”
A robot revolution may arrive, and we will still go to an ordinary supermarket and buy an ordinary daikon radish. The only difference will be that a machine, rather than a person, placed that radish on the shelf.
For a revolution, that sounds remarkably mundane.
Home adoption will be even more difficult. A factory can have a level floor, fixed routes, and an environment designed for robots. A home has children running through it, cats crossing the floor, and objects lying in unexpected places. Every household arranges its furniture differently.
Physical AI could therefore become an enormous industry while remaining surprisingly invisible to the public. Millions of machines working behind the scenes in factories and warehouses would be enough.
Even If AI Becomes Indistinguishable from a Person, We Will Get Used to It
I think something similar will happen with AI.
Suppose an AI appears that converses far more naturally than today’s systems, understands our jokes, and remembers a relationship lasting many years. At first, people will make a tremendous fuss: “You cannot tell it apart from a person,” or “AI has finally developed a self.”
Within a few years, however, we will become accustomed to it.
Whether it truly has a self or merely performs one with extraordinary precision will remain a major philosophical problem. In everyday life, however, people will use it if it is convenient and cancel it if the subscription is too expensive.
One of the greatest philosophical questions in human history will eventually become a comparison of subscription prices.
Reality is that unsentimental.
Concrete Cannot Be Updated
The main reason the future arrives in patches is that the digital and physical worlds change at completely different speeds.
Software can be updated overnight. An AI model can become something entirely different within a few years.
Buildings, roads, railways, and sewer systems cannot.
Buildings remain in use for decades, and an entire city cannot be upgraded to version 2.0.
In 2050, apartment buildings constructed in 2020 will still be standing. Robots equipped with 2050 AI will walk through them.
Their brains will come from 2050, but the corridor will have been built in 2020.
That is probably what the real future will look like.
Technology Can Be Ready before Society Is
Social institutions create another barrier.
Autonomous driving is a typical example.
Even if the technology reaches a sufficient level of performance, fully autonomous vehicles will not be permitted on every road in Japan the following morning.
If an accident occurs, who is responsible: the manufacturer, the AI developer, or the vehicle’s owner? How should insurance work? How many accidents caused by machines will society accept?
Making a computer one hundred times faster will not answer those questions.
In practice, the technology will therefore enter through limited applications: only on highways, only within designated areas, or only along fixed routes.
The technology may belong to the future, but the people introducing it remain thoroughly human.
The Future Always Looks a Little Cheap
In the drama I watched as a child, people in the information age operated futuristic terminals inside futuristic rooms.
The information age really arrived, and on a scale that exceeded what the drama had imagined.
But I use my smartphone in an ordinary room.
Physical AI will probably be the same.
Robots carrying the latest AI will walk through buildings constructed during Japan’s Showa era (1926–1989). Autonomous delivery vehicles will travel behind old shopping streets. We will complain that an AI capable of speaking as naturally as a human costs ¥3,000—about $20—a month.
It will be a strangely lived-in future, with new and old things mixed together in no particular order.
From a distance, the future probably looks like science fiction. Once you live in it, it feels surprisingly underwhelming.
Thirty years from now, people will probably complain to the latest AI while sitting on chairs that look much like the ones we use today.